The Law of Gravity
by Kanthia
Summary: After the end. Neku's trying to disentangle himself from it all, but there's still hell to pay. Spoilers.
1. The Law of Gravity

_So, if a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. Maybe it dreams. That is where I believe we have come. We are in the dreams of the city._  
Sandman #51, "A Tale of Two Cities"

_You said you wanted to help me? Heh, that day may come sooner than either of us expect…_  
Hanekoma, "Another Day"

* * *

Have you ever felt like someone has grabbed your hand and dragged you, kicking and screaming, down a path they'd set out for you? As though someone took out a knife and carved your fate right into your back, so that you could never read it, but always felt it, like it was weighing you down?

Because let me tell you, I've been there.

For starters, I've gone by a couple of names in my life, but you can call me CAT, if you want. Oh, don't act all surprised. I'm sure you'd have figured it out, given a few more hours. Hey, why don't you follow me? I'll treat you to a cuppa joe that'll knock the Soul right out of you. Kidding. Bit of Reaper humour, there.

Don't give me that look. You did as well as you could, and that's all we could ask for. But without your partner you've got about seven minutes, so.

– Follow me.

**01. [DON'T TOUCH ME]**

A week later, his mother still comes into his bedroom every morning to make sure he is still there. She'd get all weepy at the sight of his real, living body in his bed, and he'd smile at her and tell her good morning, and that he wasn't hungry.

She'd feed him anyways, of course, prop him up against his pillow and spoon-feed him this disgusting porridge prescribed by the doctors, because his real body had been clinging to life in a hospital bed for twenty-one very long days. His mind had been to far places, and the electric hiss of psych after psych still hummed in his muscle memory, but he was barely able to stand on his own two feet, and the dissonance was maddening.

"You need the nutrition," she would tell him, as he swallowed over and over to get the texture out of his throat. And, despite his protestations, she was right – when he had first woken up in the hospital with a painfully white gasp of air followed immediately by vomiting blood all over his bed sheets, he quickly realized that the nagging feeling of constant tiredness that had grown especially during the third week was a result of his physical body literally wasting away. And it was only then they he knew that the nightmare was over, and that he was awake and alive. So for a week he lay in bed, concentrating on his breathing, reading or watching TV until he got a headache. He struggled down food when his mother was looking and puked it up when he needed to.

On the afternoon of the fourth day he has enough strength to hobble downstairs and boil water for tea, before collapsing on the couch and pulling a blanket up around his shoulders. It seems to please his mother when she comes home with the doctor.

"Your mother tells me you've been recovering your strength," the doctor says, as she checks his heartbeat. "Have you experienced any vomiting?" (He nods.) "Sweating or sudden chills?" (He nods, more vigorously.) She moves the stethoscope to his back. "Breathe in deeply for me?" (He does.) "You can breathe out. Have you experienced any tingling in your fingers and toes?" (He nods, slower this time.)

"Well," she says, finally, as she removes her stethoscope and places it back in her bag, retrieving a ball-point pen. "Follow the pen tip with your eyes, okay?" She starts to move it from side to side in front of his face, slowly. "I remember you being a bit discombobulated when you were discharged. Do you remember what caused you to be hospitalized?"

Of course he does. The memory hits like a punch to the gut, and he remembers his promise to Shiki. He hadn't even thought to call her. But he shakes his head slowly, keeping both eyes on the pen.

"May I take off your shirt?"

He is surprised by the bold question, but the look of concern on her face seems genuine. Putting the pen down, she takes his pyjama shirt off slowly and folds it, placing it next to his cup of tea on the coffee table, then directs his eyes to a scar on the left side of his chest, a bullet wound.

"You were shot," she says, plainly. "It was a random act of violence, and the perpetrator was never found. By the time you were brought to the hospital, you were showing signs of what we call the seven-day death – a coma that generally lasts between one and seven days. You had us all quite worried – but you were tenacious." Smiling, she presses gently on his shoulders, until he is lying down again, and she rearranges the blanket around him. "After about twenty days, you woke up very suddenly. That sort of trauma can really knock you around, huh?"

He nods, feeling his eyelids drooping.

"You were pretty underweight when you were admitted, and you're quite severely underweight now. I'd say to stay in bed for the rest of the week, and if you keep vomiting, I'll ask your mother to readmit you just so we can get you on an IV and get some more nutrients into you. Otherwise you should be out and about in seven days or so. Sound good?"

"Yeah. …Thanks."

She squeezes his shoulder, gently. "Hang in there, Neku."

**02. [LULLABY FOR YOU]**

(_Same streets...Same crowds too. Yeah, Shibuya hasn't changed a bit._)

It took twelve calls before he found Shiki's apartment number in the phone book, but on the thirteenth, when he heard someone pick up and he cautiously said, _Hey, is Shiki Misaki there?_ he was greeted by a long and breathless silence.

Finally, "Oh, my _God_." A voice a half-note lower than he expected, but somehow recognizable. Then, quieter, "Is – is that _you_, Neku?"

(_But still, I don't think I can forgive you yet._)

"Yeah, it's me."

(_You don't see it, but...those few weeks were very hard for me._)

They chose Hachiko as their meeting point, because Hachiko had been their meeting point. A very small part of Neku that was still the old Neku, the atomized parts of his personality that hadn't been torched beyond recognition by the three-week game between a Composer and his Conductor, worried that they wouldn't be there, that he wasn't good enough for them.

(_Learning to trust people; having that trust broken_.)

Shibuya is _more_ Shibuya, somehow. After three weeks of winter and a week and a half spent in bed chewing it over very, very slowly, Shibuya seems a little more colour-dense, its lines a little more solid, in every aspect a little more _real_.

(_Finding out the town I pegged as small, and stifling, and empty... wasn't any of those things._)

So as he walks he keeps his headphones on but his music turned off, tuning himself instead to the soft hum of Shibuya's deepest secret, the breath of the living city. He walks slowly and carefully, constantly reminding himself that others can see and hear him now. And now that he can see and hear the city, no longer focussed solely on the ground and his music and the world in between his ears, the harmony and dissonance is strangely compelling.

(_I'm glad I met you guys. You made me... pick up on things, I probably would've just gone on ignoring._)

He can hear them still, the voices of his friends and allies and enemies, begging him to open up his world.

(_Trust your partner... and I do._)

And he's happy, for the first time in his life.

(_I can't forgive you, but I trust you. You took care of things, right?_)

Beat and Rhyme are waving to him, wildly, as though the action is meant to affirm their existence. A girl stands beside them, holding the thing that tells him that she is the one he had been fighting for.

(_Otherwise, Shibuya would be gone, and my world with it._)

And he knows, then, that he's won.

(_Hey, did I mention? I've got friends now!_)

And he knows, then, that his is a wonderful world.

(_We're meeting for the first time in a week._)

And he feels a cold spot on the back of his neck, as though he is being watched.

(_See you there?_)

**03. [BREATHE WITH ME]**

"Um, weird question," he says, looking up from a page of Calculus problems. Fall has arrived. The cool air whistles against the windows of WildKAT, and he's struggling to get through all the summer homework he couldn't do while he was fighting for his life. The two of them are alone in the café. Neku likes it that way.

"Hit me."

"Does Shibuya – breathe?"

Mr. H regards him coolly over the rim of his mug. Today he'd been in the mood for pulling some espresso, so he'd made a cappuccino for Neku and a red eye for himself. "…Breathe?"

"Yeah." Mr. H's coffee always looks different, and today he's made a beautiful angular design in the cup with foam. "I – don't really know, but I feel it. Sometimes, the streetlamps seem to kind of...hum, I guess, like they're breathing."

"Side effect of playing the Game for so long," he says, with a shrug and a small grin. "You're seeing Shibuya with a bit of its skin peeled off. Given any piece of art, there's a little bit of the composer stuck to it, even when it goes off to do its own thing."

"…Huh." He looks back down at the sheet of derivatives, feeling overwhelmed. The Game – or the coma – did something else weird to his brain, and he's come out of it with a bad case of synesthesia. The numbers dance in a rainbow of colour all over the page. He tells that to Mr. H, who laughs.

"Well, don't worry too much about it," the man who calls himself CAT says, leaning over the bar to ruffle Neku's hair. He notices the cup of coffee, so untouched that the design still looks like his. "Didn't like it?"

"No, I was just – looking at the foam, I guess." For effect, he drinks a mouthful, and it tastes bittersweet, full-bodied, with that strange taste that Mr. H once confided was his secret ingredient: a charred angel feather. "Besides, I haven't been hungry lately."

Something is changing in Neku. He feels it in his bones.

**04. [SKIN AND BONES]**

Three of them are sitting in Ramen Don, eating lunch on a Sunday afternoon. Beat has shuffled his courses around and is thinking of taking extra classes in maths and physics when the spring term starts; he's waving his hands and chopsticks about excitedly, talking about equations and engineering and variables and unknowns. Rhyme is listening very intently and smiling and nodding at the right times.

"So, Rhyme," Neku says, swatting Beat's hand away from a piece of sweet potato. "What're you up to these days? Any thoughts on high school?"

"Oh, not really," she says, still smiling, sweetly. "I had some thoughts, way back, but I can't seem to remember them anymore."

"She wants to be class president," Beat mumbles from behind a mouthful of noodles. "Right, Rhyme?"

"Oh, right!"

But Neku sees it now, a little lack of light in her eyes, and he remembers that when she lost everything she also lost her entry fee.

(_Oh, before I forget! I've collected your entry fee. Now...let the Game begin._)

The sound of a bell ringing draws their eyes to the shop's front door, and Shiki stumbles in. She's dressed head-to-toe in Lapin Angelique, complete with contact lenses and a straight black wig with a strong bang that suits her angular features.

"Sorry I'm late," she says, as she breezes by, towards the counter where Ken Doi is experimenting with some new sort of concoction. She orders miso ramen before sitting down next to Neku. "She had me on notions all morning, and my fingers are _ki_ – um. Really hurting me."

They forgive her slight slip of the tongue; it's only been a few weeks, after all. "So," Neku says, as she removes the hood of her bunny parka. "How's it been, otherwise?"

"Good. Tiring," she says, and the three of them laugh. "But Princess K is super nice. She's been kind of stressed out ever since the brand saddled the store with all of those commissions, but it's been working out really well."

Her ramen arrives; she eats three vegetables off the top, slowly. "It's weird, though," Shiki says, finally, lowering her voice. "She doesn't seem to remember me at all from the Game. Have you noticed?"

"It's somethin' to do with _that_," Beat motions towards the decal by the door. "Makes people forget, or somethin'. Think of all the times we were here…"

An awkward silence falls on the group, until Rhyme asks Beat if he's told Shiki about his newest skateboarding gig. Then Beat is off on another wild tangent, soup goes flying, people are laughing, and everybody moves on.

When they're done eating and Shiki has to get back to work, Neku notices that while she's eaten the vegetables she's only had half of the noodles, and drank none of the broth. Even compared to what he saw two weeks earlier when they'd first met up, she's looking a lot thinner, and the thought bothers him.

"I had to have an interview with the brand's marketing director – Emi Shigemori, if you've heard of her, she was lead singer for that band DARK STAR a couple of years back – to get the internship," she says, when he catches up to her on the street. "They asked for my cell number as part of the application package. Halfway through the interview, I got this."

She passes her phone to him. There's a text: _Protect the rabbit from the snake in the Scramble Crossing. You have two hours. Fail, and face Erasure. – The Reapers_

Neku's fingers go cold, and he almost drops the phone. Shiki bites her lip. "…I panicked. Who wouldn't?" She takes it back, trembling. "I was halfway out the door before I realized I'd majorly messed up, and that's when she hired me. Neku, I'm in an entry-level internship sewing buttons and zippers and they wouldn't hire someone who hadn't played the Game. Neku –" Her voice cracks. "—I _feel_ them, all these _layers_, the Game _pressing_ on me – on all of us – on the whole _city_. I just wish – I wish it would just go away, you know?"

Neku knows.

**05. [NEEDLE AND THREAD]**

"Thanks for showing, Neku. I owe ya one."

Neku takes off his shirt and throws it at a nearby table. He misses; a man with dark eyes in an oversized hoodie catches it, folds it, and places it next to his headphones. "Yeah, no problem. Let's just – get this over with."

"You're the boss. – You never had a fitting before?"

"Not really." Neku feels himself blushing. "– Shiki put some stuff on me, once. Not for fitting, just for pinning a hem." He takes off his shoes, handing them to another person, a woman with ice-blonde hair and one side of her head shaved. "I, um, haven't been on a runway before."

Hanekoma laughs. "Oh, it's not for a runway show." He takes Neku's wrist – Neku's skinny, skinny wrist – and removes his wristband, before dragging him over to a rack heavy with garment bags. "It's a floor show – no walking, you just stand there and get admired. Take off your shorts, yeah?"

Neku does, slowly, feeling cold and naked and – watched, in a weird sort of way, from the way the hair on the back of his neck stands up. As soon as the shorts are folded next to his shirt, the room comes alive with activity, as people begin pulling clothes off the rack, holding them up in front of Neku, turning towards Hanekoma to check for his approval or disapproval. Eventually he is pulled into a dark blue trench coat with an asymmetrical closure and zippers running all over.

"Zippers are in this season," Hanekoma says nonchalantly, straightening the coat and checking the seams. "How does it feel?"

"Heavy," Neku says, telling the truth, eliciting another laugh. "…And a bit loose around the waist."

Hanekoma reaches down and circles his hands around Neku's waist, pressing the coat in – Neku feels his breath catch when the hands rest on his hips. "You're getting pretty thin, Neku. You should eat more."

"Thanks, Mom. And I guess I should make my bed in the morning?"

"That wouldn't hurt. – And let me know if this does, okay?"

Hanekoma pins and tucks and stitches. The coat needs a waistband. Neku is helped into a pair of distressed black jeans with chains and a blue tee with a black print – both need to be taken in a size. Hanekoma thanks Neku as he leaves, telling him to not be late for the show.

Neku pauses outside the dressing room as he puts his headphones back on. _If you'd told me two months ago that I'd be personally fitted by CAT, I would have told you that you were shitting me_, he thinks, revelling in the feeling of hand-tooled denim on his skin. _It's crazy. Life is crazy. Life is really, really crazy._

Just as he's about to leave, he hears Hanekoma speak from inside the room.

"What d'you think, Boss?"

And the reply is so quiet Neku might have missed it, had it not been haunting him ever since he woke up: a soft giggle, barely audible, but unmistakably the Composer's.

**06. [COMPOSER]**

On the fortieth night after the Game, he wakes up from a terrible nightmare (he had been climbing Pork City, looking for the Game Master, but found Hanekoma instead) to the sound of rain on his bedroom window, and a soft white light just outside. It isn't acting like light – rather than a stream or sheaf, it seems to be weaving its way through the cracks in the caulking, thin tendrils of moonlight acting on their own.

And then there is a ghost standing before him, at the foot of his bed.

"_Fuck_," Neku says, and he means it.

"Honestly, Neku," the ghost says, shifting towards him. "Is that any way to greet your Partner?"

"Get out of here," he responds. The ghost comes closer, hovering over his bed. "I _mean_ it. Get _out_."

It giggles, and a white bolt of pain shoots up Neku's left arm. "When you dropped the gun you lost the Game," It says, and Neku can hear the grin in Its voice. "It – changed me, and it changed Shibuya. But I can't return your entry fee – rules are rules, after all. Might as well make the best of a bad situation, eh, Neku?"

It vanishes with the faintest smell of angel feathers, leaving Neku alone with his nightmares and the rain. He turns on his bedside lamp and looks to his left palm.

_7:0:0:0_

**07. [YOU HAVE SEVEN DAYS]**

Someone's running a straightener through his hair while a woman with bright red hair and a star tattooed under her left eye dabs bronzer on his cheeks and a man in leather pants is helping him into the jeans. Every inch of the warehouse hums with activity, as carpets and chairs and tables are laid out, platforms put up for the models to stand on, lights set up to highlight their outfits. Mr. H, sipping a cup of coffee and speaking to a man with bleach-blond hair, makes his way over to Neku, slowly threading his way through the crowd.

"Hey there, Phones," he says, bending over to straighten the pant leg. "How's it going?"

He's a little – well, a _lot_ – nervous, and he's worried that it's going to show on his face. "Okay, I guess," Neku says, instead. "I, um, actually have a question."

"Hands up." Hanekoma hands his cup to the blond-haired man; Neku closes his eyes and raises his arms, and strong hands pull the t-shirt over his head. "Alright, shoot."

"I was – wondering if Joshua would be here, tonight."

His answer is a sharp and sudden exhalation of air. He opens his eyes to Mr. H's face very close to his, and finds himself wondering, did he always have such heavy bags under his eyes? Had he always looked so worn? And since when did his skin seem so ashy, so devoid of colour?

"Listen, Phones," he says, putting his hands on Neku's shoulders. "I haven't exactly been straight with you. This isn't a warehouse show for clothes – we're showing _you_ off, tonight."

"– What?"

The man who was CAT sighs, then runs a hand through his hair, straightens up and smiles, ever so slightly. The sight of Mr. H so upset is deeply disturbing to Neku. He had, after all, once thought that this affable and easygoing man was the Composer, but Mr. H had been the only constant in a trying and awful time. "Show me your left hand, Neku."

Neku does. The number is still counting down. "The Composer wants a new Conductor. So many Reapers were lost when he and Kitaniji had their game…since you'll be reporting directly to him, the Angels'll need to – approve of you."

" – The fuck?"

"When you picked up that gun and pointed it at Joshua, what was the one thing you wanted the most?"

"…I guess it was my freedo—oh, _shit_."

Hanekoma pats him on the back, then places Neku's headphones over his ears, tenderly, like a father kissing his son's forehead. Neku has never had a father. He doubts Mr. H ever had a son. "You'll do great, Neku," he says, and Neku wonders why he sounds so defeated. "You'll do great."

_5:0:0:0_

**08. [HARMONY AND DISSONANCE]**

Neku stops going to school. He trades his uniform for his old J of the M clothes, which he hadn't put on since the Game, puts on his headphones, turns up his music, and wanders through Shibuya like the person he used to be.

The streets comfort him. The wide, then narrow accidental harmony between one avenue and the next is sort of beautiful now that he has a chance to see it – neither shut away with his eyes on the ground nor constantly on the run to save his life and others', he can soak in what he has missed. And soak he does, becomes a sponge, gathering in the clothing and the chatter, the dissonant thoughts, the chaos at Shibuya's heart.

He thinks of the upturned corners of Shiki's mouth and the size of Beat's outstretched hands and the soft sound of Rhyme's voice, ringing like a bell, and loves them for what they did to him. He wanders through his memories of Joshua and touches his memory of death, and even though it had been returned to him, it still feels as a foreign page glued into his mental scrapbook. He breathes Shibuya, feels it becoming him, feels him becoming it.

On a cold afternoon, as he wanders towards Udagawa, he catches a flash of pink and orange in his peripheral vision. It takes a few confused moments before he realizes that he _shouldn't_ have seen Uzuki and Kariya, and yet _there they were_, staring at him as though he couldn't see them.

_3:0:0:0_

**09. [PSYCHOMANCY]**

"I feel it," Neku says, as he and Shiki loiter by a window of D+B 104. "It's hard to explain, but it's like someone's grabbed my arm – someone with cold hands – and is pulling, always. It's getting harder and harder to resist." He rubs the back of his head, looking up. He's wearing fingerless gloves that cover his palms. "Sorry for dumping this on you."

She touches his shoulder, affectionately. Her hand is warm. Today she's wearing a tight-fitting t-shirt and a denim miniskirt; her internship with Lapin Angelique is four days over and she'd already found a spot working for D+B. She's dressing the part, but Neku can't help but notice that the t-shirt is bringing attention to how thin she's become. They are both turning into ghosts.

"You look terrible," she says. "If you don't mind me saying."

"No, it's okay." He looks out the window, down to the Scramble, and his voice drops to a whisper. "The other day – I can see them now, the Reapers and the Noise…"

"I'm so sorry, Neku."

"Don't be. It's not your fault."

Later on they meet up with Beat and Rhyme at Hachiko. Beat talks about prep courses and skateboarding tours, and Rhyme shyly mentions that she's thinking about becoming a kindergarten teacher, although she's not sure. WildKAT is closed and boarded up, to their surprise.

But the short length of his life has made Neku bold, so he clears away the obstructions and caution tape in front of the door. Shiki tries the handle, knowing that the simplest is often the best solution, but it's locked. Neku places his hand on hers, and suddenly finds that he's turned inside-out, aware of all the intricacies and inner workings of the lock, falling upwards in a ticking world of black and white and hard edges and feathers, and knows that it is not a normal mechanism. (Of course, the owner isn't a normal owner.) Breathing a slightly off-tune note that resonates through the pins that hold reality in coherent form, he pushes the lock open.

"—Phones?" Beat's arms are around him, suddenly, and he realizes that he'd fallen over. "You alright, Phones?"

"…Huh?"

"You spaced out on us, man."

Rhyme, who is kneeling next to him, pulls a granola bar from her pocket, unwraps it, breaks off a piece and hands it to Neku. "Maybe you have low blood sugar? You're looking a little clammy. 'The greatest wealth is health', you know?"

"Right." Neku chews slowly. It tastes thick and gluey, and weighs heavy on his tongue. "The lock – the lock on the door. I opened it, somehow."

Beat has one arm under his shoulder as they step into the abandoned café. Neku recognizes the scent of charred angel feathers immediately. The tables are more or less completely broken, there is food spilled on the floor, the bar is smashed, the walls are covered in claw marks. There are feathers scattered everywhere, trailing glitter into the dust hovering in the air.

"Th' fuck happened here?"

Neku steps away from Beat, leans down and picks up a feather, recognizing Hanekoma in a way that he would not be able to explain or describe. "There was a struggle," he says, softly. "Someone came for him."

(_And he did not go quietly._)

He claims little; there are gouged canvases and paintings that are completely unsalvageable, machinery and pins whose use Neku could only guess at, and piles upon piles of burned books and papers, some of which might have borne Mr. H's handwriting. In the back corner of a closet Neku finds a dress shirt and vest in Hanekoma's style, which he takes, as well as a collection of spray paints. On the way home, out of anger and frustration, he tags the CAT mural in the Miyashita Park Underpass with black arrows and white blood.

_1:0:0:0_

**10. [CONDUCTOR]**

_0:1:0:0_

The thing that almost destroyed Shibuya appears, in this aspect, to be a being shrouded in a pearly grey-white light.

"I knew you'd come," the Composer says, lounging on His throne in the deepest part of the Shibuya River.

"Can it," Neku says. "I want to know what happened to Mr. H."

The thing stands. Neku _tastes_ every inch of His power, of blood and milk, fire and water. "He tried to kill Me," He says, and Neku hears the threads that comprise gravity in His voice. "The Angels of the Higher Plane, already invested in the Game I was playing with Megumi, watched as he laid out his snare for Me. I admit it was ingenious."

"Because – because you were going to kill _everyone_!"

"Oh, come off it, Neku." The Composer strides towards him, trailing ultraviolet light and radio static. "If I had any say in the matter, Sanae would still be among us today. But the Higher Plane, feeling as it does about traitors –"

"**_FUCK YOU!_**" Neku throws a punch and slides through viscous plasma, burning his knuckles. "_And the high horse you rode in on!_" He throws a punch with the other hand, and this time connects with where the Composer's cheek should have been. A dark mark spreads across the lower half of the Composer's face; He is smiling, grimly.

"They judged him, and found him guilty of murder, and treason, and telling secrets. There was nothing I could do. I am, as I have always been, subservient to the Higher Plane." Neku finds himself floating, as the Composer tugs at Shibuya's inner edges and carries him into the Dead God's Pad, before depositing him on the couch. "You act as though you were the only one who benefitted from Sanae. But I –"

There is a heavy silence, as Neku fumes, and the Composer considers His words.

" – Do you know what it means to be a Composer? When cities are built they are sleeping, until they have something of a breath of their own, at which point – it was as though I had woken from a long, long dream. I think I may have been a man at some point, but I can't remember anything before waking up."

"…A dream."

"I was alone and confused, still congealing, when the Angels gave me Sanae. It has been him and I for as long as I have been alive."

Neku finds that he is drifting off, his eyelids suddenly fluttering. He looks down to his hands as the fingers vanish at the edges, and realizes that he has begun dying.

"Oh, if only you could see the things I see," the Composer says. "All the layers atop one another, the traces of the past – a palimpsest, ghosts of people and Players…" He seems to be at a loss for words, but ultimately composes Himself. "If you look hard enough, you can find reality everywhere…"

"Uh, yeah," Neku manages to say, not quite understanding. "…Reality."

The Composer waves something that looks like an arm, leaving a trail of lit dust like silver fireflies. "Honestly, do you still think that what you see is all there is? Reality forms in pockets inside itself." For effect, He cups His hands. "It forms in desires, and in dreams, and on paper, and in bowls of ramen…"

"Bowls of ramen."

He turns his right hand as though turning a page. "Turn over and we're in a world where Daisukenojo sits in a therapist's office, convinced that you are real and Rhyme never died. They think he's insane." He closes the hand into a fist. "Dive under the surface and we're in a world where Tin Pin Slammer is the sport of kings." The Composer closes his left hand around his right fist. "Come up for air and we're here, in this room. But if you choke, we're in a world where you killed Shiki on the second day, and I Erased Shibuya out of disgust." He opens both hands and motions outward. "And all of this is a pocket of a world where we are characters in a game, our entire lives confined to eternally repeating those twenty-one days. Locked in Shibuya for someone's entertainment, we are chained in a cave, looking at shadows…"

(And at this point He is thinking of _you_, dear Reader, and smiles to Himself, because He envies you most of all.)

"...Don't act as though you don't see it, Neku."

"I don't see what this has to do with Mr. H." Neku's mouth moves slowly; he feels numb.

The Composer laughs, sending a shiver down Neku's back. "I saw the mural you left in Miyashita the other night. Only you would be so bold to alter Sanae's work." Then He becomes serious, and Neku can feel it in the air temperature. "Our Game is over, Neku. Stop your running and become my Conductor."

"Like I have a choice, asshole."

"You never had one. Not from the moment I picked you." Shibuya kneels in towards Neku, and the Composer shows him the screen of a cell phone, where _become Joshua's Conductor_ is listed as a meme. "We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way. Either way, you have…" He looks at Neku's left hand. "…forty-five minutes, give or take."

"So it was you, then." Neku pushes himself up, slowly, until he's sitting upright. "All this time, I've been dying, and this was your doing."

"Oh, Heavens, no. Sanae left a little bit of himself in you, back when you were a Player with Misaki. I have a feeling he knew how it would all turn out, even back then." He leans in and wraps Himself around Neku.

"T-the fuck?" Neku can feel tears, now, gathering in the corners of his eyes.

"Sanae was the heart of this city, as I am the Soul. And you, Neku, are all Shibuya has left."

Shibuya burns a little brighter that night, as its new Conductor is born.

_0:0:0:0_

**11. [IT'S SO WONDERFUL]**

On the fourth day the mission is Reaper Sport 4, and Ami and Daisuke have run themselves dizzy, chasing after Harrier Reapers through the back streets and alleyways of Shibuya. Daisuke suddenly sees a flash of pink moving towards the Miyashita Park underpass, and shouts to his Partner that he's spotted the Game Master. Hand in hand, the two make their way down, threading through Noise, laughing to quell the fear, truly living for the first time in their lives.

They turn a corner and it is not Pinky that they see, but a tall man in a blue trench coat criss-crossed with zippers is there, examining the graffiti. Daisuke tugs on Ami's arm but Ami points to the massive black Reaper wings and the cans of paint, and Daisuke's breath catches in his throat. It's _him_. It's actually _him_, and he's a _Reaper_.

The Reaper who is CAT must have sensed their presence because he suddenly turns to them. Daisuke sees someone tall and rakishly thin, ice-blue eyes under heavy orange bangs. Something unintelligible tip-toes through his brain, and he is suddenly very afraid. Wings that large can only mean one thing. _This guy is way more powerful than the Game Master._

The Reaper's eyes narrow very slightly, as Ami chokes out half of a word. Daisuke turns to her just in time to see her eyes widen with the force of an unseen blow, and a Harrier Reaper disappear up to the rooftops. And then Ami is gone, Erased into chunks of static.

"The fuck?" Daisuke jumps up, head spinning. "The actual _fuck_?" He lunges after the Harrier, but while he was distracted the blue-eyed Reaper has caught up to him, and grabbed his arm. The air is gone from Daisuke's lungs, and the Noise are slipping out of the cracks, hungry for a stray Player.

"Hey," the Reaper says, as he kneels down next to Daisuke, looking to where Ami once was. "…Have you ever felt like someone had grabbed your hand and dragged you, kicking and screaming, down a path they'd set out for you?"

* * *

_Only the phoenix arises and does not descend. And everything changes. And nothing is truly lost._  
Sandman #74, "Exiles"


	2. Psychomancy

**Psychomancy  
**_Or: Five Conversations We Had Over Coffee_

**01. [GAME]**  
The first time Neku walked into WildKAT after the last Game, he was breathless from the distance he had crossed. It was his second time leaving the house after his post-Game recovery (the first being his meet-up with his new friends), and he was still anaemic, his body weak from the things it had done.

The café seemed a little more difficult to locate than he remembered, tucked away in an alleyway, and had it always been so shrouded in shadows? But every inch of the way there had been written into the soles of Neku's feet, and he found it exactly where he expected it to be.

The decal was still there (he could not find the decal on any other store, with waking eyes) and he touched it as he approached, out of habit. He paused and took a deep breath before placing his hand on the doorknob, pushing it open with a soft jangle of a hand-rigged bell, and there was the man who was not the Composer, casually polishing a green mug behind the bar.

Neku found himself rooted to the ground; time slowed and congealed in the air around him.

"Hey there," CAT said, tilting his head.

He'd last spoken to the man – well, he'd been in bed for a week, and he'd not seen him at all the third week, and –

"Sixteen days, give or take a few hours." Hanekoma put the newly-cleaned mug down on the bar, reached down and retrieved a coffee pot. With an adept hand and eye he poured it, then reached down again and placed a bowl of soup next to it. "Been a while. Looks like you could use something that sticks to your bones – c'mon in and eat, yeah?"

"I –" The room temperature returned to normal. "—I suppose. Yeah."

And that was all that needed to be said.

**02. [AND MOUSE]**  
Things of that nature get easier, slowly. But Neku had questions and Hanekoma was always short on time, which sped things up significantly.

On the fourth day after his recovery, Neku found his way back to the café, where Hanekoma was waiting for him, with another cup of coffee and a stack of pancakes. Neku knew better than to ask about the food. He sat down, had a mouthful.

"I saw you," he said, to CAT's back. Hanekoma looked over from the espresso machine. "Right at the end. There was a flash of white after I dropped the gun and before I blacked out, and I saw you and Joshua."

"Well, I'm never one to turn down a kid in need of help," was the reply. "But yeah, I was there."

" – But you're not the Composer."

"No."

" – And you're not – whatever Shades was."

"The Conductor? Nope."

"But you know all about the Game. You told Shiki and me – way back then – that you were there to…watch over? Who – why?"

"Aah, now you're wandering into secret territory. How 'bout we change the subject?"

There is something dissonant going on in Neku's brain, because he wants to trust the man with cool eyes more than anything, and yet in his nightmares he's been breathless and dying on the rooftop of Pork City. So he changes the subject as asked, and the two chat about schoolwork and shopping until Neku has to go home.

(Those Secret Reports were not for Neku, they were for _you_, Player.)

**03. [WE PLAY FOR KEEPS]**  
"All of them," Neku says, sipping cautiously. "All of them were Players."

"Except Joshua. And Megumi, come to think of it. Got that one straight from the RG."

"…Really?"

"He was a lot like you," Hanekoma says, wiping the countertop with a dirty rag, and the sound of his voice tells Neku that the line of conversation is finished. Once again, Neku wonders: _was he suffering? Or was he too closed-off to know?_

"…D'you lose your Entry Fee?"

"Yeah. – Usually, although there are sometimes…special circumstances. It takes a special kind of crazy to sign up for that sort of job, y'know?"

"I know. …Will you tell me what their Entry Fees were?"

Hanekoma sighs. "I s'ppose I owe you that much." He puts down the rag and starts counting on his fingers. "Higashizawa was always thin and sickly, longed to be more – soldierly, yeah? They gave him that body of his, hoping he would understand that some things don't come from your fists. He didn't. Went mad with power and killed fifteen Players on his first day. Megumi hired him straight away. Kinda puts his obsession with Miss Misaki into perspective, eh?"

"…I guess."

"Lessee. Uzuki had really pretty black hair, all the way down to her waist. Really pretty, really vain. They took that. Kariya – "

"—Lollipop?"

" – Yeah, he has – had – a really close friend. They took his memories of that friend, and the friend's memories of him. Uh, Konishi was exactly the person you remember her being, they made her all spaced-out and ditzy. Her and her Partner were about to go down fighting the GM when Megs offered her brain back if she'd kill her Partner as a declaration of loyalty. She did."

"…Huh. What about Pi-Face?"

"Sho was – special." Out of the corner of his eye, Neku notices that Hanekoma has braced himself on the bar. "He found this place all on his own, back when he was alive. Feisty even back then, but I liked him – used to tag over my murals with his own art. Kid was a genius. Thought about groomin' him to take over the business, but he got hit by a car with his nose in an art book, and that's life. "

"I, uh." Hanekoma is looking a little disturbed, an emotion crossing his face that Neku cannot name or place, and it troubles him greatly. "I'm – sorry?"

He shrugs. "They wanted to rip the _create_ out of his brain, but all they did was give him a peek into the stuff our world is made of – the program, as it is. Gave him eyes that saw no beauty, only the code. The human brain can only take so much of that. A week of it left him in – well, in the state you found him in."

"Batshit crazy."

"We were gonna revive him, but he begged us not too – couldn't face the world, after what he'd been through. And all I could do was make sure he ended up a lion…"

Hanekoma seems drained, and the conversation moves to a safer place: Neku talks about something he saw on the way over, and Hanekoma polishes glasses and listens. He is very, very far away.

**04. [EMPTINESS AND]**  
"Nah, not really," Neku is saying. "He walked out on my mom when I was really young."

"Ah." Today they're sharing shots of espresso. Neku thinks that Hanekoma is somewhere around his tenth, although he can't quite tell – and he doesn't know how healthy that is. Meanwhile, he's still working on his first, taking long breaks between sips to cut the taste. Hanekoma always chides his weak coffee game, but Neku has never been into bitterness. "Shucks, Phones. That's quite a downer."

"I…don't think about it too much." Neku sips, tastes bitterness and acceptance, like someone trying to get away and not quite making it. And how can he put it in words, the way he feels when he talks to Mr. H? He thinks of Sunday school, God the Mother-Father, the nurturer and the judge, who would carry you on His back one day and rain fire on your home on the next.

And where does that leave Neku?

"Well, people can suck sometimes, eh?"

"—I have this weird dream a lot," Neku says, changing the subject rather suddenly. "I'm on the roof of Pork City, begging you to let me help you, and you –" Neku chokes, and the room goes very quiet. "—You said I would, and you took out two feathers, and –"

"—That's enough, Neku."

"—I just – don't – _know_ – who you are," he says, through gritted teeth. "Are you a Reaper? Why can I see you? Are you a Composer like Joshua? Are you –"

"—That's enough." Hanekoma has come around the bar, to stand right beside Neku. "Lissen, Phones. Th' world's a great big place, and we all have a place in it. D'you know what we call your power?" He puts a hand on Neku's head; it's a startlingly intimate gesture, and when Neku looks up, he notices that Hanekoma has gold eyes with an incredibly dilated pupil. He'd never noticed that before. "We call it Psychomancy – speakin' with the dead. It's rare, and powerful, and unstable. All of us had our eyes on you for years, so when Joshua went on the offensive, I knew we had to do something…"

There is a shift in the air, a sudden drop in the temperature. "There are some things you may not know, even at the end of it all. – But you'll have to make do with what you have. Remember what I told you, back then?"

"—Trust your partner?"

"No, the other one."

"…'Enjoy the moment'?"

Hanekoma shakes his head. Neku wrinkles his brow, confused, but a sudden rush of recognition rips through him like an electric shock. He sees an empty white space, an angel's wing, and dark black blood. "…That the day would come sooner than either of us expect?"

"I came back for you," Hanekoma says, ruffling Neku's hair, and that is that.

**05. [PSYCHOMANCY]**  
It's a painful decision, but Mr. H's lease on the building technically has eight more months on it, and it would be a waste to let the place fade into static. So Neku, winglets still tender in the wake of his second death, rolls up his sleeves and gets to work. At the very least the building can serve as a mausoleum.

"I still don't know who you are," Neku says, as he plugs in the coffee maker. By some miracle the plumbing is still working, despite the broken glass and scorched wood that marks Hanekoma's final struggle, and he fills the machine enough to make two cups: one for him, one for the dead. He's brought in a bag of pre-ground beans from a small stall in Dogenzaka. He pulls a feather from his back, chars it with a fistful of energy, and adds it to the mix; soon, the sound of percolation and the smell of coffee slides up the walls.

"…But I trust you." And how could he not? Even after his disappearance, something about the man still lived on, in the way Shibuya breathed. Neku had taken to tagging the empty spaces on the walls and streets, if only to hear the last threads of Hanekoma's mad song. He hears thoughts and rumours about CAT's metamorphosis into something new. And while he's not about to dispel those rumours, it makes him happy, and very, very sad.

"I think I understand, now," he says, as he pours the brewed coffee into a mug he's brought from home. It's one of the few things Joshua allowed him to take from his old life. He pours a second cup, leaves it on the bar. "You told me that alone, we face limitations. And you knew your limitations, because you were alone. You were the loneliest guy in Shibuya. You were lonelier than I was, so you knew who I was."

Even Joshua, it seemed, did not know much about the man who had lived and then died. "You…knew things. And you couldn't tell anyone about them. So you looked at Pi-Face, and then at me, and saw people wrapped up inside their own heads, so much that you could trust yourself to talk to them."

He takes a drink. He'll never get it to taste exactly like Hanekoma's brew, but such is life: everything changes, and nothing is truly lost. "…It's bitter." _We sweeten bitter things so we can choke them down._ "You trusted us with your life." And Neku knows that Hanekoma is gone forever, knows with the part of him that was born the moment he woke up in the Scramble Crossing, and he learned to speak with the dead. "You took your secrets with you, wherever you went." And Neku knows that part of him will never be lost. Hanekoma is tattooed into his skin, printed on each one of his atoms: like the power series of real numbers between 0 and 1, he's a handful of emptiness that's bigger than the universe.

"Well, I'll be enough for both of you," Neku says, toasting to the empty air. "You guys were crazy. Thanks."

_The future you must choose is within you.  
I am glad to have had the chance to meet you._  
Secret Report 22


End file.
